Newbie says thanks for the help

[Neftci]

Hello everyone. I have been a lurker for some time but wanted to introduce myself. I wish I would have found this forum before I bought my system, but nonetheless this has been a treasure trove of information and insight.

Before I found this forum, I needed to buy something quick and bought a Costco Swann bundle as I was taking an assignment overseas and wanted to be able to monitor and record activity on the house I left behind. I paid $800 for the system that included 8 3MP NHD-825 cams (DS-2CD2032-I clones) and a Swann NVR16-7095 NVR (appears to be a Hikvision DS-7616NI-E2/16P clone), and then added 4 more Swann NHD-825’s for $300 from Amazon. I am not unhappy with the purchase as it fits my needs for now, but clearly this forum has taught me that there are better options.

I have a Netgear R7000 router with OpenVPN that thanks to the guidance on this forum, allows me to securely and remotely view my cams from thousands of miles away. Together with OpenVPN and iVMS-4500 apps on my iPhone and iPad, I can reliably view the live streams as well as recorded footage. OpenVPN on my Windows laptop also allows me to access my network directly to change NVR and camera settings.

I recently added an Annke I61DR Hikvision Cube Clone and thanks to the excellent thread about this camera, I successfully upgraded the Annke firmware to the Hikvision 5.4.5 firmware. The Annke didn’t play well with my Swann NVR, but no worries as I added the camera separately to my network, added it to iVMS-4500 and can see all 12 Swann cameras and the Annke with no problem.

I still have lots to learn and hope I can offer something to the forum in the future.

Thank you again for all your help!

 

[gwminor48]

Hello, welcome to the forum, happy to hear you are enjoying the forum. I have learned much from the people on here too.

 

[mat200]

Hello everyone. I have been a lurker for some time but wanted to introduce myself. I wish I would have found this forum before I bought my system, but nonetheless this has been a treasure trove of information and insight.

Before I found this forum, I needed to buy something quick and bought a Costco Swann bundle as I was taking an assignment overseas and wanted to be able to monitor and record activity on the house I left behind. I paid $800 for the system that included 8 3MP NHD-825 cams (DS-2CD2032-I clones) and a Swann NVR16-7095 NVR (appears to be a Hikvision DS-7616NI-E2/16P clone), and then added 4 more Swann NHD-825’s for $300 from Amazon. I am not unhappy with the purchase as it fits my needs for now, but clearly this forum has taught me that there are better options.

I have a Netgear R7000 router with OpenVPN that thanks to the guidance on this forum, allows me to securely and remotely view my cams from thousands of miles away. Together with OpenVPN and iVMS-4500 apps on my iPhone and iPad, I can reliably view the live streams as well as recorded footage. OpenVPN on my Windows laptop also allows me to access my network directly to change NVR and camera settings.

I recently added an Annke I61DR Hikvision Cube Clone and thanks to the excellent thread about this camera, I successfully upgraded the Annke firmware to the Hikvision 5.4.5 firmware. The Annke didn’t play well with my Swann NVR, but no worries as I added the camera separately to my network, added it to iVMS-4500 and can see all 12 Swann cameras and the Annke with no problem.

I still have lots to learn and hope I can offer something to the forum in the future.

Thank you again for all your help!

Welcome Neftci, good to have you join us.

Feel free to share the little gotchas you experienced during setting up your system.